Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/39

1335] is still more evident in the varied groups around the cross upon which St. Peter hangs. Soldiers on foot and horseback stand on either side, a young woman and her child look on with deep compassion, and a youth flinging his arms back in a manner plainly borrowed from some antique bas-relief, recalls similar types in Giotto's frescoes at Assisi and Padua. Certain figures among the spectators in quaint Mongolian costumes remind us that the Franciscan friars, following their founder's example, had penetrated far into Central Asia on their missions, and suggest that these strangers may have belonged to the immense concourse of pilgrims who thronged the streets of Rome in the year of Jubilee. A frenzy of religious ardour had seized upon the whole of Christendom, and marvellous are the tales told of the multitudes who crowded the churches, and of the piles of gold and silver that were raised up night and day before the altars. Among the fragments of the predella formerly attached to this altar-piece is a Madonna, whose fine proportions and gracious tenderness show a distinct advance on Giotto's earlier pictures, while the Babe in her arms is sucking his thumb in the most natural manner.

Pope Boniface, we are told by Vasari, was deeply impressed by Giotto's merits, and loaded him with honours and rewards; but the colossal Angel above the organ, and the other frescoes which the artist was employed to paint in the old basilica of St. Peter's, all perished long ago, and the only other work of his now remaining in Rome is the damaged fresco of the Pope proclaiming the Jubilee, on a pillar of the Lateran Church. This last painting proves that